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Tutankhamun, or King Tut as he's affectionately known, was the boy king who ruled Egypt during the New Kingdom's 18th dynasty, from 1333 to 1324 BC. In life he wasn't the most important or memorable of Egypt's pharoahs, but in death he's become the one pharoah everyone's heard of.

Everyone makes them (some of us more compulsively than others): scribbled on post-it notes, or kept mentally in our imaginations – we all make lists. And we're not the only ones either; lists have been around for a long time – possibly since the first writing systems and certainly since Sumerian scribes began to keep accounts in the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia. So what is it about the beauty of a list – its numerical order, hierarchy, completeness – that makes them such a part of how we like to categorise, order and understand the world?

The recent discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard has turned up over 1,500 pieces of stunning gold and silver artfacts from the 7th century Dark Ages era. The find has been described as "unparalleled" and represents the largest haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever to have been discovered, within an area which was the heartland of the Kingdom of Mercia. The Mercian tribe was particularly aggressive in their conquests and fought to expand the land in their control - centered on the valley of the river Trent, what today is the English Midlands -  in wars against Northumbria and East Anglia. Out of the more than thousand artefacts, we've chosen the 5 most astonishing ones to show to you.

We all get a bit ticked off when someone else uses our favourite coffee mug. But for the Jews in ancient Jerusalem, keeping their best cups sacred was apparently a matter of the gravest importance.

A stone drinking receptacle dating from around the time of Jesus Christ, found recently on historic Mount Zion, has shed light on strict religious ritual when it came to mugs in Biblical times. It bears tens lines of strange script scratched into its side, which – while not yet deciphered – are nevertheless believed to indicate that the cup wasn’t to be casually used by just anybody.

Archaeologists have unearthed a unique Aramaic inscription, on a stone excavated on Jerusalem's Mount Zion. But the phrase is written in such an odd way experts fear it will take months to understand. The stone, believed to have been created around the city's Second Temple Period (516 BC - 70 AD), was found inside a house complex which has already proffered a mikve ritual bath and three bread ovens. %QUOTE Shimon Gibson, who is leading the University of North Carolina dig at the site, was enthralled by the remarkable stone, but warned it would be at least two months before anyone could decipher its clear but cryptic message. "This is a difficult script, not one that is worn or graded, which demands research," he told the Jerusalem Post.